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Welcome to the Green Career Tip of the Week
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Online Version of this Issue Green Career Tips Archive
Green Career Central is celebrating Earth Day with an incredible discount for members joining between April 22nd and 30th! Read this week's Highlight for more details.
It can be tough standing out in a sea of applicants to get that green career you want. Read this week's tip for six ways to shine bright for prospective employers.
Did you get a f.r.e.e month on the Green Career Central site this week? Scroll down to see if the beginning of your email is next to the treasure chest. We do this every week!
Highlight: Earth Day Special – New Members Join Green Career Central for Half Price
To celebrate Earth Day we are extending a special half-price discount for all new members who join GreenCareerCentral.com between April 22nd and 30th!
Green Career Central is a powerful, content-rich resource to help you:
- Switch to a green career
- Start your green job search
- Get a green education
- Green your resume for a future career change
- Launch a green business
- Advance your current green career
As a member of Green Career Central you will receive:
- Full access to organized, content-rich information, helpful tools, and targeted resources all designed to make you the ideal candidate for your target green career.
- A step-by-step plan to reach your green career goal.
- Preferred ranking of your resume on the Green Career Central Job Board.
- Easy-to-access, current resources you can use to achieve your green career goal. (Including green job boards, green recruiters, green schools, green industry profiles, and a green business center)
- Personalized support, through our discussion forums, teleclasses, and workshops, to help you keep moving when you feel stuck.
- A variety of articles and interviews with our team of career/business experts.
For all the details and to take advantage of this great half-price special rate.
When you get to the site, click on the Earth Day Special button!
Don't wait:
The first 10 new members will receive
a FREE one-on-one 20-minute Mentoring Call with
Founder and Executive Director Carol McClelland.
Tip of the Week: Six Ways to Outshine Your Competition for a Green Job
With the economy as tight as it is, one of the best ways to ensure you get the job is to outshine your competition.
These days it is not unusual to hear that hundreds of people are applying for a single position, or that thousands of people are showing up at job fairs with only a handful of employers in attendance.
You may be accustomed to thinking about these scenarios from the job seekers side. I imagine the numbers make you feel a bit frustrated and hopeless. How can you ever hope to win a job with those numbers?
To get a perspective on this question, it may be helpful to put yourself in the shoes of the recruiters, hiring managers, and Human Resource specialists who must wade through hundreds of resumes to determine who the best candidates are. Imagine how you’d feel after looking at your 90th, 199th, 299th resume of the day! A bit bleary-eyed, I’d imagine.
Or think of the people standing at a job fair booth. It’s the 6th hour of the fair, you’ve talked to hundreds of people and there are still more people standing in front of your booth. Clearly, you’d be in some phase of feeling overwhelmed.
As a job seeker, your goal is to stand out from the crowded terrain to be the person the hiring manager actually remembers at the end of the day.
Six Ways to Outshine Your Competition
1) You Must Be Able to Clearly, Confidently, and Enthusiastically Describe Your Green Niche
If you’ve been reading the Green Career Tip of the Week for any length of time, you probably already know that identifying your green niche is one of the most important steps you can take to enter the green economy. But beyond identifying your direction, you must also be able to articulate your green niche in a way that engages everyone who hears you talk about your passion.
Demonstrating your passion is contagious. As you speak about what interests you, your contacts will pick up on your excitement and pass your name on to those who may know companies that are hiring.
Being able to describe your green career goals in an interview or job fair situation will feel like a breath of fresh air for the hiring managers, recruiters, or Human Resource specialists you encounter. You can’t imagine how many people they talk to who can’t give a precise statement about their passions. After talking to people with muddy perceptions of their future, the hiring personnel will recognize that you aren’t like the others in the queue. Your clarity will command their full attention, which is exactly what you want.
2) You Must Have Activities on Your Resume that Demonstrate Your Values
Don’t even think you can greenwash your way into a sustainable company or green industry. Hiring managers are looking for job candidate who walk their talk when it comes to environmental beliefs and sustainable actions. What activities demonstrate your commitment to helping the planet?
Can you integrate greener actions into your daily life? Changing how you commute to work, modifying how you recycle at home, or retrofitting your home to be more energy efficient are just a few ideas. If you choose this method to demonstrate your values, be sure to choose actions that are in alignment with your target industry in some way. When you include these actions on your resume or in your interview, you want the hiring manager to take notice and be impressed.
Another option is to become active in your community, by volunteering for a community green team or for an environmental organization. When possible, volunteer in a way that builds your case for your target position. If you want to get into organic agriculture, volunteering at the community garden might be a great idea. The same volunteer gig may not be as powerful if you want to get into the energy efficiency field. Be strategic as you choose your volunteer activities.
A side benefit of engaging in your community is that you have the opportunity to build a network of people who are passionate about making a difference. (See #5 below for more details on this.)
3) You Must Be a Company Builder
Employers are looking for people who will jump in to help the company reach its goals. For companies that are striving to grab more market share or to develop a new technology, it’s not enough to be willing to do the job you were hired to do. You must be willing and able to do what it takes to get the job at hand done.
This characteristic is especially important if you want to work in an emerging industry. You must be comfortable with change, constant change. You must be confident enough that when you hit a snag you can find your own way around it without waiting for someone else to bail you out. You must go with the flow when the business direction changes to match to evolving business climate.
Not everyone is meant to work in this kind of hyper-charged environment. If you prefer to have a stable work environment, you’d be best suited for an industry that is more established. Although every industry is going through some degree of transition, an established industry will be a bit more stable during the move to a sustainable way of doing business.
4) You Must Be Able to Demonstrate Your Expertise
Although it’s always been true that professionals must be able to demonstrate their expertise in their profession, this way of establishing your edge has morphed a bit. Employers are looking to hire people who know their industry of choice and have a good understanding of sustainability and the green economy.
I recently read a post on the Environmental Leader blog by Mark Hanny, Vice President of IBM's Academic Initiative and Preeta Banerjee, Assistant Professor of Strategy at Brandeis’ International Business School that talked about “T” shaped professionals. According to the authors, “The shape of the “T” in this instance describes one who is “deep” in a subject such as computer science, engineering or finance but who also possesses “broad” knowledge across many subjects, including business and public policy.”
By developing a hybrid set of skills, you’ll be better prepared to look beyond the silo associated with your industry or profession. You’ll be able to evaluate how changes will impact other parts of the company or the economy. With the green economy evolving at a rapid pace, highly sought after job candidates must be able to think through technical, political, and business changes that impact the company.
5) You Must Connect with Your Local Green Network and Your Profession/Industry
Although you may think you’ll need to compete with large numbers of applicants for every single job opening, that’s just not the case. Jobs advertised on job boards are only a portion of the job openings that exist at any one time.
The best way to learn about unadvertised jobs or jobs that are about to be advertised is through your network. Being in a position to contact the company early in the job search process allows you to make an impression they’ll remember.
To be in a good position to hear of leads from your network, you must begin connecting with people now. Don’t wait. If you are switching careers, this is one of the best ways you can prepare for the time when you will be looking for a job.
Look for local green groups through your community and local environmental groups. Attend a few meetings. Find a way to get involved. If you network online, search for green groups through whatever social network you are on.
6) You Must Be Able to Articulate How You Are the Solution
A company is going to hire you because you are able to solve a problem they are facing. The more you know about the problems your target industry/profession/company is facing, the more attractive you will be to hiring managers.
If you can demonstrate that you know their language and have innovative ideas to solve their problem you’ll definitely get their attention! Don’t try to wing this strategy. Do your homework. Read as much as you can about relevant issues. Talk to people in the field so you don’t sound like an outsider. Practice talking about the issues you can solve so when you are faced with a question in an interview, you can respond effortlessly and passionately.
Your Next Steps
If you are searching for a job right now, your goal is to stand out from the crowd and make a great impression whether they see your resume, meet you at a networking event, hear about you from a colleague, or find you at a job fair. Since you have a short time horizon, you need to think about which of these strategies is going to give you the best results quickly. Review your history to see if you can highlight things you’ve already done.
If you are shifting careers from a traditional industry into a green industry, you have a bit more time to build your brand and sculpt how others perceive you and your expertise. You might want to focus on three initiatives in the short term and then create a strategy for building in a few more of these ideas as you get clearer about your ultimate green niche.
Copyright © 2009 Transition Dynamics Enterprises, Inc.
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Green Career Central Blog:
Green Career Trends: This week we share details about a battery maker, a green replacement for Styrofoam, a switch up in the biggest wind states, and a Nevada solar project.
Follow the Green Money: New projects getting funding in Florida, New York City, Colorado, and Texas. Check out the details to find out who is hiring.
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This Week's Drawing for a
30-Day Trial Membership: mitch_lawrie
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What's New at GreenCareerCentral.com
New Industry Profile
One indispensible tool in the discipline of geography is known as GIS, or Geographic Information Systems. These are computer systems that capture, analyze, extract and report spatial information about the Earth's surface. Read the industry profile to learn more about the careers in this field.
Geosciences > GIS
Post Your Resume on the Green Career Central Job Board
Our job board allows you to post your resume anonymously, search the job openings, set up email job alerts, and apply for positions. Take a look!
Take Action on Your Green Career Goal
Are you looking for some ideas on how you can move yourself forward toward your green career goal? At this link you’ll find suggestions whether you are looking to...
...Green Your Job
...Give Back
...Green Experience
...Green Education
...Green Job Search
...Green Business
Did You Know...
...if you missed a Tip of the Week, you can read the archived publications?
Green Career Tips Archive
About Us
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Green Career CentralTM is a virtual career center for motivated professionals who are ready to find a green career that fully expresses their passions, skills, values, and talents.
Carol McClelland, PhD, founder and Executive Director of Green Career Central, has helped thousands of people discover their dream career through her book Your Dream Career For Dummies and her work with individuals, groups, and students. Together with her team of experts, researchers and writers, Carol has pulled together sixteen years of experience into a broad collection of how-to articles, resources, support, and teleclasses to help you find your way to make a difference and prosper.
Why not have the green career you've been dreaming of? You can struggle on your own or gain support throughout your journey. The decision is obvious ... Join Us Now!
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